


Anything Less Than That

by softcorevulcan



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Blood Drinking, Character Study, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 11:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softcorevulcan/pseuds/softcorevulcan
Summary: Wesley and Angelus have been sharing an odd pattern of intimate events that have been quite, well, bizarre. Angelus has been almost compassionate lately. They're in bed together, and that peculiar consideration shows itself again.Set in an alternative S4 path, where Wesley didn't join back with the others, Angelus comes out before being purposefully brought out, and Wesley makes a deal with him in order to prevent worse things. This is the outcome of that partnership, after the apocalypse is stopped. Mentions of Angel/Wes and Lilah/Wes.





	Anything Less Than That

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Angel for the first time recently, after already having been a fan of BtVS for a long time. Basically, I fell in love with Wesley as a character, and what came out of that was a long character study because I scoured the internet for Angel/Wesley and Angelus/Wesley stories and am in the midst of reading through all of them that I could find, and am in desperate need of more, and decided to contribute to the number. If you have even a single rec for me, please let me know, I'm still looking for more to read. Please. I mean it.
> 
> This fic came about as the contemplation of how in some version of S4 events Wesley might have fallen in with Angelus. It's a snippet, as in the full series of events contemplated, Wesley initially makes a deal because he thinks Angel or Angelus would still fall into being a tool for the apocalypse, used then screwed over along with all the other people he cares about, along with the world, and that bigger goal of trying to keep Angel from staying stuck in the cycle of 'played' and keep his old friends from being in the way of the damage is what initially motivates him to decide working with Angelus is justified.
> 
> Warnings: Dubious consent, suicidal feeling mentions, anxiety mentions, blood letting.

Angel was upon him, around him, a perfectly ordinary occurrence. His back was soft against the bed, he felt almost cradled between Angel and it - a less common happening, but still quite ordinary these days.

Not Angel. He was more affected than usual by the thoughts, it seemed.

Moments ago he'd been having another one of his attacks, where whatever delicious cruelty, sweet pleasure, had been planned or initiated, was thrown off by a tremor in his body and a sudden remembrance of everything on the inside. All those pesky feelings.

Guilt, Angelus would often label it.

Angelus had been peculiarly - kind was the wrong word, always the wrong descriptor when it came to - but that was the only thing vaguely close to describing what the vampire had been like, as of late, when Wesley fell into such an attack.

Sweet, another almost-valid descriptor.

Maybe it was some very long-game form of torture. After all, the vampire had been encouraging him to trust as of late. As if that could ever have any real possibility of happening. Even if Wesley sometimes wanted it, desperately, just to look at that face and pretend and embrace whatever horror awaited his foolishness. Because, it was foolishness, after all. Even if this man were still souled... still Angel. He would still choke the life out of Wesley, still tear Wesley to bits underneath him for things Wesley could never pay for, still less pain then Wesley deserved. Any moment of indulgence, of the idea that the man against him, half above him, almost cradling him as he stroked Wesley's arm gently and adjusted Wesley's face to a position that could be easily observed, and monitored for changes that could indicate the panic returning - any moment of indulgence was akin to suicide, in a way.

If not in fact, then in theory.

Angelus, for months, had been insisting that he doesn't want Wesley to die. Curious behavior. Has been eroding Wesley’s actions, whenever Wesley's moves might had been construed as particularly self-destructive. Although the vampire has no right or no idea what he's been getting in between of.

Angelus's hand stroked through Wesley's hair again - delicate was an inaccurate term, but that was the closest to it - and Wesley couldn't find it within him to shiver coolly at the intimate touch. The unwanted, dangerous touch.

Wesley so badly wanted it to be genuine. He indulged. Just for a moment, just partly. He wouldn't give in on the inside of course, wouldn't trust or believe. But Angelus had already shown over the months that he wasn't interested in hurting Wesley any more than Wesley liked... as long as they were getting along to some degree, as long as Angelus didn't have a point to make that Wes would rather be tortured over than acknowledge. Which happened less and less these days.

Right now the point Angelus was trying to make, was that he was safe. Which was well past bizarre. But it was better than the vampire taking his whiskey and pills and forcing him to down water, and even maneuver Wesley to start rambling about daytime television - even though Angelus could care less, even though he cared so little he wouldn't even merit discussing the death of Dr. Phil unless Wes planned to do it himself. And even then, Angelus had said, Wes better do it from a distance with a pole or some sort of instrument, because Wes was above that man, and ought not to sully his record with such an inferior life taken. As always, Angelus had instead painted what a pretty picture it would instead have been to murder a friend, like Gunn or Fred, or a worthy deserving foe, like the council that didn't deserve him - to which Wesley again had to remind the vampire, was already mostly destroyed thanks to the first evil. Angelus, pleased, had laughed, mentioned Wesley being above slaughtering such insignificant people anyhow. No, Wes deserved bigger, grander things. More fantastic deaths.

He surged forward and kissed Angelus again, teeth clanking in his urgency, hands tight in dark hair, uncaring if it hurt. Angelus certainly didn't care. Usually.

Anyway, Wesley liked everything better rough. Rough was real.

The truth. The brutality of it. Angelus, cruel as he fucking was, sometimes tried to soften it - and how dare he think he had the right.

But there it was, in between harsh pulls of hair, and possessive grip on the back of Wesley's neck reminding him of the killer who often just snapped lives away instead of eating the precious blood of life so as not to waste, Wes could feel that horrible soothing touch across his back, solid and supporting, somehow feeling like Angelus was trying to hold Wes together instead of helping to rip him apart.

Absolutely horrible. Horrible.

Wes let himself bite, felt dull still-human shaped teeth bite back into the flesh of his own lips, felt his own blood trickle, felt Angelus finally mercifully dig too-strong hands into his back and claw at it. Harsh and deep and still not brutal enough, god, not violent enough, pansy - but enough to draw a bit of blood, feel a tinge of pain in sharp stripes, know there would be gentle bruising later.

Angelus was still treating him like broken porcelain, and where did he have the right? Wes was a sadist, maybe certainly a masochist, this was a denial of his basic right, need, to have what he wanted and desired. Angelus was all about fucking desire, it wasn't fair when he did this - dialed it down. It was against logic, and systematic behavioral traits, and it wasn't what Wesley deserved.

He deserved pain. He tore back at Angelus trying to rip out hair, trying to move down to rip at the vampire's neck with his own dull teeth, desperate to rip off chunks, whole parts, until Angelus got short sighted and impulsive again and reigned down upon him again the way a monster should.

At the neck, before Wesley could do anything, he was unceremoniously hauled away, by an impossible grip, with not an iota of slack to struggle within, then crushed between the pillows and Angel's lips again, and Wesley again tasted his own blood trickling from bitten lips, being coaxed back into his own mouth. The lack of oxygen, the inability to do anything about it without the room to struggle or wriggle, with that hand still holding him impossibly tight, in place, knowing Angel had no strife about holding his lips and nose shut later, impossibly forever, however long it took to make Wesley do what he wanted.

Right now, he wanted Wesley to drink blood.

For Wesley to drink his own blood.

When the vampire finally let his lips free, let him gasp quietly and not enough, Angelus moved down to rip shallow cuts into Wesley's arms, watched the cuts bleed with that insatiably patient curiosity he had, completely inhuman, almost clinical - like the way Wesley got when he was being Ruthless Wesley and tortured Demons or Vampires or even - whoever, whatever it took, whatever was needed. When Wesley would dissect their struggling bodies while they writhed in not quite tight enough constraints, all in the pursuit of that truth. Whatever truth was needed, whatever objective Ruthless Wesley had decided justified the callous single minded resolute pursuit.

But Angelus embraced passion again soon enough, swarming back down to sink painfully into Wesley's neck - the side opposite of the scar, so that Wes would have all angles of his neck relatively marked - by bruising, biting, cutting. All marked up. Just like his insides, Angelus often said. Wes wore his insides as his outsides because he was too honest not to, Angelus had said, in between laughter once, in between pulling ropes tighter against Wesley's limbs and slicing with a pretty antique knife Wes quite didn't want dulled and mainly just kept around for decoration. And maybe sentimental value.

Wes welcomed the passion. Writhed and gripped Angelus' shoulders, tried to make the other man bleed. He loved the pain. This was what he wanted anyway.

Not the blood loss per say. But this.

He deserved this. As Angelus would agree.

For different reasons, Wes feared, during instances when he let himself contemplate the bizarre gentleness Angelus almost held for him at times.

But that fear was best left pushed down and buried, like most of them, and Wesley shivered when Angelus pulled back, a part of Wesley utterly relieved that death wasn't on the menu. Because Wesley had been unprepared. No crucifix within reach, not even a knife - he'd gone to bed, to panic. Angelus had sent him there half-drunk, but mostly internally horrified and externally numb, because Angelus often urged Wes to sleep when he was seeming particularly robotic.

Angelus liked passionate Wes, angry Wes, a Wes who felt things and cried and screamed and felt conflicted, who couldn't bury anything because it was way too raw.

All this, of course, in contradiction to the fact the vampire as of late had been horrified by his anxiety attacks. If anything, Wesley would have put money on the vampire getting a thrill out of an actually insane Wesley who shook uncontrollably and heaved inconsolably and couldn't stop the shakes and the urge to take a drill to his skull, or really any blunt object, if only to make it silent. Not even for death, because suicide was too clear a plan in the panic, no, just for the quiet, for the dreamless sleep or thoughtless precision of pursuing a goal, clarity and purity that could never come because he was too busy thoroughly losing his mind in his crimes come alive to catch him and devour.

Angelus said he liked clarity. He seemed to be unsure what he wanted when it came to Wesley though. Did he want the man to be focused and serene, slicing things to perfect bits and resolute, unafraid in the face of any hardship, any particular horror? Too committed and too far gone to concern himself with consequences he'd already weighed. Or didn't the vampire prefer him at whit's end, barely holding it together and breaking apart like the pathetic thing he was, the failure he couldn't ever change.

It was only one gasp, barely there, just a moment of pain that was internal instead of external, but the change was perceptible - suddenly Angelus was restrained again. His face shifting back to that softer counterpart, like Angel's. In momentary failure, Wesley's breath stuttered again, thinking too many awful things in the panic that was being shoved back down again.

Angel would never have looked at him like this. And how utterly fucked. That the face looking down on him was one of, no. No.

It couldn't possibly be compassion. That would hurt too much. Even if it was just the ghost, the mask of one, some poor pitiful act attempting to emulate, or some demonic suppression of the very thought of doing it. It was still there. That particular softness to the expression. Angel would never ever look at him like this. Even as this cruel thing, who would doubtless have berated himself for even being capable of the ghost of such a look. Angel would never even wear this weak, barely there variant.

Angel would have choked him. Would have ripped into him, if the man somehow had felt enough old memory of sentimentality to give Wesley at least that.

No. No.

Angelus started soothing Wes again, no. No. All wrong.

Soothing would hardly be the word if anyone else were to describe it. But Wes was being pressed down again, hands to his sides and chest, body back against the pillows, unable to do damage to Angelus anymore, unable to be violent or coax violence upon him. Angelus was making him lie back and feel the vulnerability of his mind, unable to hold himself patchwork together with brutality and another body, or even his own crossed arms like holding ones guts in.

No, Angel - Angelus was between his arms, deceptive smooth human face, slowly languidly teasing at the cuts he'd sliced down Wesley's arms, as if he contemplated feeding. But Wes knew he wouldn't. How terribly unfortunate.

In the dance at the edge where Wesley's feelings boiled by the surface and threatened to rear, the contemplation of death sounded wildly welcome. Tremendously so.

Finally, after agonizing moments, perhaps even minutes of this torture had passed, Angelus stopped contemplating and took action. He sliced one delicate cut near Wesley's wrist up farther toward the fingers, the vision of gentleness, lighter than feathers. If there was pain then it wasn't near enough for Wes to consider worthwhile.

Then the man delicately maneuvered that hand, the palm and wrist gathering red, and pressed it down onto Wesley's lips. Made the blood go into his mouth.

Angelus watched, gaze relentless. It was unending, and it expected Wes to look back, and only glance away if it was to contemplate the blood. For a moment he let his eyelids flutter shut, to just submit and let what was forced to happen occur, but at that, finally, Angelus's free hand gripped his skull roughly and shook him, made him stare back again.

Made him aware.

Angelus, perhaps, wanted that. Wanted Wesley aware. Wesley has been so busy lately... or maybe for such a long time, maybe years... being anything else. Because aware means panic, and even panic means too deranged to really be lucid, and lucid reality means remembering he's not -

He's not worthy. He's not worthy. He's not anything, he's not - he's wrong.

He's past - he gets another rough tug, Angelus pulling the wrist away, to pin Wesley with his lips instead, and it's violent and firm and real. Solid. God, Wes needed that.

The panic swells away, bright raw emotions too complex for words or definitions or clearness that leads to pain, and there's just feeling again. Feeling Angelus against him, with him, reminding Wes that he's alive and real.

"I think you indulge guilt too much," Angelus doesn't whisper, because he's not gentle enough - or perhaps cruel enough, which is even worse - to try and make the truth palatable and kind too. There are still, Wes contemplates, as Angelus moves back in to kiss him again, to whisk his breath away, fears away, small mercies in this world.

Somehow Angelus is the most merciful thing of all. For Wesley.

In a way it's well past twisted. In another, it's perfect. Exactly how everything was meant to fall together, if destiny was worth any of its salt - which it ought never to be. Wesley was making sure of that. His current work life now consisted of a beautifully useful trinket he'd found, and used Angelus's particularly messy bloodlust to the advantage or powering. To pursue all those wretched demons and would be gods who seem to make and craft those disgusting prophecies. The beings so past self-righteous that they play with people's lives and make lies real, real into lies, everything into pawns, universes into written play. Wesley was carving through universes and dimensions with his brilliant new toys - and perhaps, he was Angel's-Angelus's own brilliantly satisfying toy - finding freakishly egotistical demons that screwed reality for petty revenge and godhood, and massacring them.

Or, that was too nice a term for what the two of them were doing.

The deal, the partnership, was still rather similar to what it had been when they'd first made it. Angelus was happy to put off the maiming and murder if it might affect Wesley's own ends, and to everything beyond that, Wesley allowed free reign - allow being a word Angelus pointedly beat out of his vocabulary when the plaintive truth of the arrangement slipped out of Wesley's cocky mouth on occasion. And in this single minded pursuit of Wesley's, lately, Angelus had actually been enthralled by the gall of it - to seek to subjugate would be gods and pawnmasters, to become the thing that had tried to be the fear. Angelus had been possessed by glee in his efforts to wantonly indulge Wesley's most current fascination.

Angelus never ceased to be amused and enthralled at Wesley's capacity for violence and cruelty, and although at the moment it was mainly being directed at demons and justifiably - at least to Wes - monsters, it was still beautiful. Angelus sometimes likened it to his own grandeur, loved the fact that it was beyond starting an apocalypse of his own accord - something Angelus had almost managed once in a drive to conquer everything with finality - it was carving up and surgically removing the ability of anyone, anyone, to put that power over him instead of the other way around.

It was beyond delight, beyond pleasure. It was something Wesley thinks, Angelus actually admires.

Angelus did not like being the Beast's plaything, puppet. Did not like Wesley pressing on the fact that Angelus's impulsive aggressive shortsightedness, soul or in fact no, was making him nothing but a tool. That was perhaps why they'd made an agreement, after that first encounter. Because Wesley had been wise enough to do the unthinkable and point out to Angelus, ego and all, his flaws. After all, what was the man going to do, kill him? He'd do that anyway.

Angel would have done that no matter what. So what point was there in ever bothering to play docile and timid. Wesley somehow, had even gotten Angelus to find sense, look to the long term, the glory of an eternal life of whatever he wanted, if only he let Wes help, help him escape the path laid out for him whether he was Angelus or Angel.

Inadvertently, help the world escape it's end.

Sure, a lot of people died. Still.

Fred hadn't. Gunn hadn't. Cordelia had been saved.

Angelus and him had enough foresight, without ego or impulsivity in the way, with too much value for a life without prophecy and traps day in and out forever, to find the capacity to craft a plan that would free them.

The beast was made flesh, corporeal, and slaughtered. Before, Connor was sent away, with a spell of irreversible amnesia - because Wesley had argued that killing the boy would have gotten the beast's attention, and still around, Connor would have protected the beast and understood things too imperfectly, and fussed the whole thing up. Angelus had been rational, bloodlust miraculously subdued in favor of the long term, and finally, understanding his own preservation, had agreed with Wesley's conclusion and helped facilitate the steps to get the son far away, somewhere completely removed from this reality as far as anyone would ever be concerned to think.

Despite a few rash proclivities, and undesired cover ups on Wesley's part, Angelus had even managed to play the - to convince _them_ that he was still Angel, if not a particularly level-headed compassionate Angel. Then 'Angel' had left abruptly after the slaying of the beast, and the sweet others had probably come to some conclusion that it was due to the grief over the disappearance of Connor, or guilt at what all Cordelia, and everyone, had gone through.

No one knew Wesley had helped, he was sure they could never fathom just how widespread his actions had been involved. He considered that some of Holtz old gang, now his disciples, had figured out Angel wasn't quite what he seemed, but the ones with sense had been slaughtered. The ones who were perhaps, only liabilities, when Wesley left the city - well, whatever had happened to them wasn't his business anymore.

"People die everyday, Wes," Angelus had told him, Wesley couldn't have placed when. They'd had similar conversations with some frequency, enough to be commonplace. "There's no point being guilty over things you aren't a part of. You're not dying. No one you care about is dying - at least, not from anything that's your fault, and probably never anything they can't handle without you. There's no one pulling our strings anymore. Way I see it, there's nothing to get worked up over. Maybe celebrate."

But that conversation, played out in variants, didn't stop his insatiable compulsion to know about any other prophecies or boogeymen hiding in the wings, almost - no certainly obsessive, to the point where a psychotic vampire was actually concerned, yes - yes it was most certainly concern, despite how Wesley fought to ignore it.

Wesley remembers scouring books, trying to get the ones he didn't own when the apocalypse of the moment ended, and being dragged bodily out of LA. Forced to for some unfathomable reason watch daytime television, and go to demon frequented bars in the fuck all desert, and Angelus had even courted some pretty young woman in scant clothes that reminded Wesley unnervingly of Faith, and Angelus had thrashed Wesley against the wall of an alley to kiss, to coalesce, then to stare in that too-much sort of way, that nearly-compassionate way, and despite all the harsh grip and bruises blossoming to greet Wes later, Angelus had smiled and somehow made Wes laugh. Had tried inviting Wes to come join him and the girl later, and help play with her, as if that would have even had any sort of appeal - to which Angelus had smiled ever more knowingly and nipped at him, teasing how Wes did love making tough acting women writhe as they were stretched and kneaded and pressed into whatever he wanted them to be.

Another unwarranted laugh from Wes, at the thought of Lilah - oh - of that woman ever actually becoming what he wanted. He'd hardly tried to shape, if he were being honest with anyone, with himself. Sure, the plan at some half formed deliriously humored point, had been to manipulate her into his own easily controlled pawn. But, everyone had been so incredulously easy. Holtz' men had been easy, not even warranting consideration. Lilah had foolishly, unnervingly, had a desire to please, to be the bitch who threw him around almost as violent, trying to be as wicked, as he wanted, while also mewling in mock sweetness at platitudes of obedience, thinking that's what he desired - some sweet darling girl who was a mockery of innocent, submitting not because he'd made her, but because she was so desperate for his firm hand.

He'd rarely needed a firm hold, for her. He doesn't think maybe she could have taken it, either. Even when he indulged, it hadn't been like this. It hadn't been the same - the stabbing in the gut, because a vampire couldn't care all that much - the almost gnawing desire to completely unrestrain, because as long as Wesley had no knife or stake, the vampire could endure nearly anything he lashed out. Lilah... she had wanted to please. But what was that? When what Wesley wanted was what he deserved, and although at the time he'd convinced himself, sometimes and in some capacity, that he had deserved the mockery that was darkness half embraced, violence partially fulfilled, incomplete and never fully satisfying, because of course he didn't deserve satisfaction.

He would never -

Angelus was looking at him, as if reading his mind, although he never would. Never could. Wesley felt momentarily like he was about to hyperventilate again. He had the deranged urge to ask silly stupid incessant questions, like he'd done lately, when Angelus made him ply himself with alcohol or dumb movies or socialization at a neighborhood grocery store - whatever neighborhood they were in - and what a bizarre form of torture, or even care, to serve. When he'd be a blathering mess on the inside and Angelus would be trying to coax it out, maybe wise enough while calm to know that if Wesley didn't get it out at some point, then eventually he would be loony like Dru - and permanently. Too gone to be a fun plaything anymore.

Angelus liked his reasoning skills too much. His honesty, loyalty. His capacity for wrongness, at which, apparently, was the one thing in life Wesley was consistently excelling and improving at over time.

"Who was your favorite fledgling?" Wesley had asked during one of those deliriously odd nights after they'd gone to a bar, and Angelus had done something awful Wes had pretended to be willfully ignorant of, and Wes had maybe shoved around with some woman or man, maybe fought or maybe tried at a quickie, before Angelus had found him smelling faintly of fresh blood, and dragged him away and conquered him until he'd screamed his throat raw. And they'd laid in a comfortable heap until it had become so unnerving, so unnerving that rather than fix it with more wanton violence, Angelus had brought him a glass of water and shoved him to the couch instead, with a blanket, and made them contemplate those tortuously, inexcusable five a.m. infomercials, in effort to torture Wesley with the intolerable atmosphere until he started rambling aimlessly and then the television volume was allowed to finally be muted, because Wesley was finally behaving and being honest in some twisted obfuscated degree.

It was so funny.

Funny being a relative.

Angelus genuinely preferred him honest. Some things, Wesley would rather endure unbearable torture over, than ever give voice to aloud. This was their unpleasant compromise - a type of event Wesley wished never existed, never happened, and universe have some fucking mercy eventually, would at some point cease to exist and maybe Wesley could pretend those events never shattered and ruined his image of the delightfully pure and simple hell he lived in now.

Because those events were nothing if not thoroughly complexing. They usually consisted of all the welcome, fantastic violence, and occasionally Angelus's more torturous unpleasant ministrations when he was really stewing over internally about Wesley being the kind of person who bottled things - although the torture was less and less, as they'd progressed. Wesley didn't want to contemplate if it was the horrific insanity that Angelus was for some unfathomable reason being compassionate to him, or if it was more of a failing on Wesley's own part, allowing himself to weaken down his defenses and just cooperate. Because, my, that certainly would be foolhardy. Wesley was half certain that a great part of the fun for Angelus was that Wesley still tried ordering him around, tried acting as an equal, tried enforcing his views as worthwhile. Too much submission, and what was Wesley but another nothing?

But Angelus for some reason, really did prefer him honest. Even painfully, no-one-had-a-right-to-witness-or-know-existed honest. Even over tortured and agonized and screaming and being broken into little bits. Maybe, Angelus felt like Wesley being forced to acknowledge the truth, even waningly, was the most delightful pain of all.

The pain of reality. Huh. Maybe there was a point there.

Whenever it happened, Wesley was too lost to notice it. Because who wouldn't be lost. You expect another pleasant night of utterly horrific violence, and exquisite pleasure, because Angelus is particularly gratuitous when he's pleased, and Wesley at least, can please Angelus in this regard. He can do this. He may not be able to kill a person in cold blood, at least hasn't, yet. He may never win over even the idea of a just Angel. But unprovoked acceptance of pain? A victim who refuses to be victimized, who takes out each dole and delights in it? Angelus thinks he's quite marvelous.

Or, Wesley hopes he does. But it's always a question on Wesley's mind when those events occur. It's going great - great being relative - then maybe Wesley must've made some look of numb disconnectedness, or some gasp that had nothing to do with the sensations of physicality. And then it would all turn fucked, and eventually inevitably he'd be forced to drink water or contemplate a bowl of soup from a can that Angel - Angelus  - had maybe microwaved or heated up. Wesley by those points was always too thrown off at all the many details to catch that particular one. Then usually, the awful basic cable of a television would be in the background... or even worse, on occasion, a radio, with potentially good music, music Wesley liked, music Wesley might smile listening to if he were vulnerably himself.

And a fucking vampire sitting a hand's distance away, not completely looking at him, but very obviously observing him, occasionally making an aborted move to rub Wesley's arm or shoulder or back. Even more occasionally - yanking or shoving Wesley violently to remain compliant, remain seated, and endure this horror obediently and engagingly.

It's the most unorthodox thing in the world that Wesley ever had to endure, these events. Well, after the once remarkably odd circumstance of working with a vampire, in an office, kissing up regularly, which had been the epitome of concernedly bizarre compared to the watcher-oriented training of his youth.

Maybe that was hyperbole. Still. Sitting and sipping absently on chicken noodle soup as a maniacal killer sat beside him, attempting to hide a shadow of honest to goodness, Wesley-would-swear-on-his-soul concern, pretty up there. More up there than most things he ever expected Angel to do, especially after -

And then there was the awful normality of it, mundane world aspect. The fluorescent lights being on in the room, instead of comfortable darkness. The television carrying on like he lived in a world the rest of the oblivious people pretended was the norm. The blanket, just ordinary fabric. No spellbooks or inexplicable ingredients or weapons within reach, for all intents a perfectly average looking scene. An event another person might have, might experience. Maybe, an event he might have once hoped to someday experience, back when his life was Perfect-Wesley-or-you'll-deserve-bad-things, back when the best he let himself dream and hope blithely for had been to see a vampire in the real flesh, to take it in skill under real, genuine, honest circumstances.

Maybe then, after the glory of illusion had worn off, and he'd fucked up at every turn at what he'd at least, he thought, been mildly good at, when he'd been jobless and hopeless, maybe then he'd contemplated such an event as this. Maybe, you know, sitting in a hotel with some stranger who had gotten to know him just enough, just an iota enough to pretend to care and sit in amiable silence with. Some other body, also contemplating it's own life's issues, who wanted to contemplate the disaster of it all, the simple mundane disaster of failures that weren't truly horrific on the grand scale, that weren't yet relating to kidnap and betrayal and broken trust - that were still just about personal weakness and lack of direction. In this maybe hoped for scenario, the someone would miraculously be nice enough to Wesley to not find all of it utterly pathetic. But um, well, it had never played quite that companionably smooth in the few times post-Sunnydale that anywhere near this kind of event had even mildly been approached with some other someone.

But this - this companionable, freakishly somehow almost supportive feeling, event with Angelus? This bizarro world event that kept happening with mildly increasingly scary frequency over the last few months? Well, it was -

It sure was something. Something Wesley wasn't sure would have been some glorious fantasy, or completely unadmitable perversion.

It reminded him, only very very slightly, of back when he and Cordelia would spend an amiable breakfast with Angel. Or a light lunch in the office. Or just sit not minding each other, preparing weapons or cleaning demon muck off of themselves as best as they could in a rush, before the next part of a job.

It was like a long bygone comfort he had most certainly taken for granted, that he could never get back. Except it also felt even more intimate, in some ways. Maybe because the things he and Angelus did before the events, he'd never done with Angel, never would have been able to do. Maybe because the things he said after, in this twilight zone of incredulity, he also never would have voiced to Angel. And yet, here it was. Here they were.

"Who was your favorite one? Fledgling?" Wesley had asked quietly during one of these events, in between rather unjustified bouts of quiet hysterical giggles, quickly drying in his throat, and the shaking hyperventilation of oscillating internal panic at his own issues. It had been quiet, Angel had mercifully not made him listen to the television that time.

Angelus.

He had humored Wesley, said Druscilla.

Wesley had nodded sagely in response, like an utter fool, like a newly graduated watcher pretending to understand everything and filing it away, really understanding nothing. "Why?" Wesley had wondered, so genuine. "Was it because you broke her? I remem... you like, liked, breaking people into pieces. She -"

"Yeah, she was my greatest work," Angelus was wistful, mind in a pleasant place.

Wesley had nodded, again, as if he understood. He did not.

"I noticed you've been doing it less lately - breaking people." Wesley perhaps should not have mentioned it. No wisdom in provoking a monster, after all. He didn't need to be flayed alive - or worse, his ex - the people he cared about in LA didn't need to be remembered, especially by anyone in this room.

Mercifully, that was not where Angelus's thoughts had seemed to settle. "No drive, right now. Dru was the pinnacle. I'm not going to have a result that beautiful ever again. And if I did, it wouldn't be the same. I'd rather have something new."

"If you made a new one, you wouldn't break it then?" Wesley as often, during those events, had felt oddly compelled to push where he ought not. But it was an oddly comfortable atmosphere during those events. The kind that made Wesley think it wouldn't be too bad to get his neck snapped, and might even feel nice to be mangled, just to feel something. And pleasant unconcerned curiosity glimmered hopefully during such moments, unfettered because of his exhaustion, and therefore not barred by a verbal or mental censor to clean up everything and calculate what was needed, to guide him to cold calculating objectives. Instead, just unworried fascination, a break from the mild psychosis of his own internal worries, a strange set of moments where he felt like a Wesley who had never hated himself, or concerned himself with what a monster he'd apparently always been, and instead Wesley existed in a state too tone deaf and captured in wonder to bother with anything. Like when he was a child, reading a book, not because he had to and was told to and would be expected perfection, but out of simple joy. A personal desire.

Uncomplicated.

But of course, that was just during those events, illustrating how deranged he must be during them. Because really, how could he and Angel, he and Angelus, sitting in a room, or even continuing to exist at this or any point, be 'uncomplicated'. Ha. Ahaha.

Wesley had probably let off another unwarranted giggle in the silence.

Angelus didn't answer the question. It was his game after all. His odd scenario, his will, his turn to shape Wesley and the turn was wasted humoring illogically timed laughs and suppressed probably-cries, and weird little shakes that made up for the perfectly level breathing.

"If you make a new one, I doubt it would go over well. I can only imagine the annoyance of training it."

Angel had glanced at him then, amused, "Me training it, or you?"

Wesley had been amused as well, oddly, pleased as peaches even though he had no right to be. "Both, I imagine. And I can't picture you having a terrible amount of fun if they lie over and follow direction awfully fast. However, I'd be likely to stake them should they be so uncooperative. I've little patience left for something so -"

"If I let you stake it."

"It would hardly be a matter of if."

Angelus hadn't been mad, at that underlying insinuation. The thread underneath each word of Wesley being an insolent brat, reminding the vampire that this was a partnership Wesley called the shots in, and even when that was occasionally completely taken from him - although usually it was quite, actually, fairly balanced - Angelus had still learned the peculiar truth that Wesley's plans were best, were useful, and were thoughtfully worth merit. Even if you were an egotistical mass murderer with little patience for considerations.

Wes was not egotistical enough himself to fully believe that Angelus fully thought of him as valuable, but an inkling inside Wes did imagine that maybe Angelus quite liked Wesley's blatant honesty, contradictory and unsniveling though it was. Maybe it was because it was more than Wesley, truly, had given Angel. At the point it had mattered. And that was the only time it really did.

Maybe Angelus worried Wes would do that too - keep the useful truth Wesley reached and determined to himself - maybe Angelus humored this peculiar partnership in some odd subconscious fear of letting a less than perfect, less than well executed, Wesley get too distant and make it too easy. No, if Wesley was held close in intimacy, then it'd be harder for Wesley to lie to him. To hold in truths. It was the unfortunate reality of the matter.

Wesley could shape himself into this new man, always there somewhere, just less fully unsheathed - ruthless, willing to sacrifice or change anything if it accomplished it's objective. Even do the unjustifiable. Even make himself live through it and carry on, make himself shoulder the guilt because even that was more worth it then failing to do what had to be done.

Angelus had thrown him down then, after that comment - how pleasant - letting the soup become the floor's problem, and ravaged Wesley, and everything had felt okay again. The event had finished, Angelus was himself again, although in that wonky new way where he was making things pleasurable and good-nice-delicious violent instead of terrifying, and Wesley felt safe even though it was in total contradiction to his bodily response to the threat of death upon him.

It could have been that Wesley didn't mind death at that moment, or it could have just been that ending the moment was so merciful that Wes didn't care if the price happened to be unfortunate later.

 

Wes was back in his current moment, his moment on the bed, almost to the point of cursing again, of panic welling up and terrorizing him again, because Angel was observing and callously too-gently kissing sweetly upon his neck and cheek and jawline, pulling back in between to assess Wesley's condition, watching whatever work he thought he was doing. And all this languid break had done was let Wesley consider awful painful perhaps-real things that he'd rather not be aware of.

Angelus dragged Wesley's finger to the vampire's lips, used to wipe some of Wesley's blood off from them. That face was still human, eyes still brown, Angel's face.

The finger was brought back to Wesley's lips, and Angelus did expect him to lick and suck it off. Because of course he did.

No point refusing to oblige, Wesley supposed. Although the taste didn't do anything for him.

But it always seemed to do something for Angelus. His eyes always sparkled with delight, that same delight of snapping a human neck, of taunting a deliciously horrified victim as they thrashed and ran and he feigned a struggle before sweeping them up and listening to them shriek because they somehow hadn't expected him to overtake them. A second, less obvious part, satisfied in a pure sort of way, like this was the nature of what Angelus expected the world to be, that simple rightness of Angel drinking the blood from Wesley's arm, as Wesley fed him fresh blood when nothing else was enough, after his time in the ocean.

Wes had some unfortunate, unrestrainable desire to give that Angel what he wanted, needed. What was it? Devotion, or guilt, or atonement. Love? Some twisted evil inside of Wesley, an evil his childhood would have certainly condemned it to be, probably far far past that.

Back then, what had it been? Wesley had just been willing to do whatever it took. Whatever it took to help him. Even if that help maybe would not have been wanted, had the man been lucid enough to reject it, to choose death or another body or anything rather than trusting Wes, even in a subconscious capacity, again.

Now, it was some echo, some shadow, of when Wesley was sure he did the right thing. Even if maybe it wasn't, if there was an argument there that Wesley had fucked the karmic justice for someone in the equation. Fuck whatever the destiny had been though, or could have been, would have been - wasn't that why Wesley was tearing through a few realities now, killing whatever demons had the capability to try and sculpt such a 'certainty'?

"I think you get off on the perverse thought of corrupting someone with a soul." Wesley had that needed-to-be-suppressed urge to laugh a bit again. Lord knows why Angelus ever made him feel safe and, okay, enough, to want to let go and be amused.

Wesley felt his own fingers get forced into his mouth now, instead of resting there at leisure, and Angelus's grip turned from soft strokes through Wesley's hair to hard firm hold of Wesley's neck and jaw. The feathering of kisses stopped, Angelus was watching him closely, amused instead, doubtless considering how funny it would be to suffocate Wesley by just moving his free hand from jaw to nose. Either way, the grip would be too tight for Wesley to do fuck all about it.

"You wouldn't be wrong," Angelus was pleased, and did let Wesley choke, pressing Wesley's own fingers farther down until he had the urge to gag, then letting it continue a few moments before finally pulling Wesley's fingers back out, then dragging them down to firmly rest on Wesley's naked chest. Like a band-aid, a patchwork in case Wesley needed the arm free to hold himself together, so that wretched panicking wouldn't start up again.

Wesley was entirely grateful for that allowance, and watched Angelus carefully.

"I think it'd be more satisfying than you without one." Angelus was musing, hard grip on Wesley's jaw morphing back to soft stroking, and carding through Wesley's hair, deceptively placating. He didn't trust it, and Angelus seemed almost imperceptibly thrilled that Wesley's hackles were up, slight worry.

Sometimes Angelus vocalized his contemplations, about what a good vampire Wesley would make. How his calculating mind and capacity for cruelty could be so utterly beautiful, were that guilt pressed out of the way. That tiny, barely there guilt, that Wesley thought ought to choke him up so much more than it did, that Wesley was truthfully quite adept at wholeheartedly ignoring and overriding to accomplish whatever needed being done. Guilt was no excuse for failure to do things.

"The things you do, Wes..." Angelus seemed like he was drifting from quite a pleasant contemplation, to something approaching brooding, and Wesley could almost see Angel right there, all burdened and weighted down, but his body was against Wesley though, so of course, all wrong. Impossible. Another shadow.

It turned out Angelus was burdened, though. "Darla told me, back then, that who we were informs who we become. She used to watch me, before she chose me. She said she had seen what I could become, that potential."

Wesley had no idea where this admission was heading. But the faint unwarranted sensation of this feeling too oddly familiar to their 'events' was touching at the back of his senses. This felt unnecessary, too much.

They weren't supposed to be friends. Him and - neither of them were supposed to do this. Do this. "But you Wes? Even with a soul, you do things -" This honesty, this- "I wasn't like this. I wish I had been."

That wasn't what Wesley had ever um. What an odd thing to be contemplating. He made to say something, but it felt awkward, what was one to say? What could someone say. Maybe nothing? But, that face, it looked just like - Wes would give anything to indulge that urge to console it. He used to indulge it all the time, with silly stupid things like 'You're like a rare volume.' What an idiot he'd been. Was. Is.

Angelus, still perhaps broodier then that typical cocksuredness he usually wore, was meeting Wesley's eyes now, looking for something, but really struggling for something within himself. Again, Wesley felt that odd bubbling urge to sputter something helpful, at even more of a loss of what could possibly be useful or functional, right now.

"When the curse - I had been disgusting. Pathetic. I had no idea what to do, I was -" Angelus hated that version of him, that weak soulful self who'd thrown away the achievement Angelus had become of himself, had ever conquered of his own fears, and wound up a mess of guilt that couldn't - no, wouldn't kill. "I couldn't make myself stop caring. I couldn't -" Angelus pressed himself to continue, as if torturing himself.

It was quite an exquisite thing to witness, if Wesley were being honest with himself. Angelus rarely opened himself up to vulnerability, and rarely addressed the elephant in the room - the enemy he loathed more than any other, more than anything ever could be reviled.

He hated himself. Wesley understood. It had always been there, only in mirror form - Angel hating Angelus, the demon he struggled to contain, to pay penance for. For this demon, this Angel without that soul to make him feel horrified by himself, it was somehow still there. Even though Angelus had worked past his, rather, hilariously to Wesley though he never ever showed a sign of his opinion, paranoid distress that the curse might be redone, a while back. Wes had been the main person threatening to restore it, and at the time Angelus had bought the bluff - or perhaps ruthless fact - that Wesley would find a way to re-insoul him and let him be a pawn of destiny's puppeteers indefinitely if Angelus refused to cooperate and be smart enough to let Wes help free him and everyone else from destiny's one disastrous train track for them. When the crisis of being played by destiny had been averted, and Angelus had made multiple private gos of destroying certain orbs that could fuck him over, the vampire's panic had subsided and been hidden much better with jovial condescension.

Then, when Wesley had thrown them wholeheartedly into this plan of hunting that threw them through a few dimensions, away from anyone particularly angry with Angelus personally, in the 'I know you and how to stop you alive' sort of way, the fear went dormant. Seemed almost impossibly unrealistic. Even at that point, Wes was sure that Angelus, having already admitted to Wesley's truth that he didn't think ahead enough in preparing, had certainly taken Wesley's actual sense to heart and likely safeguarded against the kind of horror that would be his soul so easily returning.

And even after all that, Angelus still seemed horrified. But not with his soul - with himself. To him, even without the distinction of a soul, there was still a him that could commit beautiful atrocities and see life clearly and fantastically as the eternal miracle it was, and another him that fell defeated under the crushing weight of one setback so thoroughly, that he'd lost himself completely.

Wesley often felt that way himself. It was too familiar a looking glass, actually, and Wesley very badly wanted to look away from the vampire that was laying plain and obvious things that really, any decent person should hide. Things that ought not be examined, visible, laid in supplication toward others.

"Here you are, with a soul," Angelus was saying quietly, and god but Wesley wished there was a way to look away, to disconnect. But no, he was wholly aware, in his own body with the panic nowhere to be found, all present and engaged, reality viscerally holding him. "I don't understand how I could become - that. How I could be so pathetic, couldn't - kill anymore, or do anything."

"It was different," Wesley matched his quiet tone. "With a soul comes guilt. It made you view things differently. Things you enjoyed simply meant something different, it was a shock to you."

Angelus seemed lost, somewhere. "No I - when I was human, I wouldn't have cared. I would have killed, probably, why not. If I thought I - it's not as if I had cared much, one way or the other. There wasn't any reason for it." On the last sentence, the vampire gritted the words out, uncomprehending, unfathomable to him how the guilt could have changed him like that, could have even overtaken him or mattered to him in the first place. His first, most thorough failure. That fear.

"You had no reason to want to keep killing. There had been a reason, some kind of benefit to it for you. That hadn't been there as a human, was lost when you - changed."

Wesley couldn't have explained to anyone why he was helping, was consoling. This was something. "But you have guilt." Angelus gripped him hard and slammed his skull into the bedpost, the bedpost into the wall, the collision a loud noise in the otherwise muted room. Angelus was struggling to put back the vampire now, a flash of yellow and a ripple of skin, but no, for some reason he didn't want that face, that him. He tamed it, but he still climbed over Wes, settled there, pressed him into the bed, made his bones creak, efforts to bruise that clearly would succeed. He was so angry.

But not outward to Wesley, or the world, or the universe, he was angry at some internal flaw that was permanently fixed and could never be escaped. Even if his soul were to be eviscerated, unable to haunt as even a possibility. Because the flaw was him. "You have guilt, you have a soul," every phrase enunciated with a press just that bit harder, Wes made sure to keep his breathing level, to placate and not encourage the kind of impulsive violence that lead to dismemberment and a corpse to be found by some someone who wouldn't be worth the event.

"Somehow you can do all of it. You can dice those demons up like an artist, you revel in the fucking screams, Wes, it's nothing to you. You can do it to people too, it's not a shred of skin off your back if you kidnap and abuse some human, it's -"

Wes wanted this line of rambling to meet some point of coherency. Before Angelus worked himself up into a frenzy, or pushed Wesley unintendedly into some equivalent kind of rage that might actually wildly find success. Wesley was nothing if not resourceful, determined when he lost any common sense to whatever that clear precise objective shaped itself to be. In a survival situation, why wouldn't it be Angelus? It would be a quick slaughter with the wooden bed posts behind Wesley, using adrenaline to find a way to stake him before the vampire could rip Wesley's little dream illusion of himself to bits, even though it hardly existed at all. Then where would that leave Wesley? Without Angel, without - "I haven't killed an innocent. Yet. And I probably wouldn't unless it was needed."

At this, Angelus only laughed, coming full circle finally, from that consoling shadow of compassion to the murderous delightful terror Wesley used to write about, read at length about, bizarrely not immediately recognize in Sunnydale. That fantastic monster Wesley had chained to a bed and promised he would kill if it ever came to that, despite not truly actually knowing what such a promise really meant. How could he?

By the time he could truly understand that kind of promise... he was too far. He had hurt Angel too much, and any small mercy of putting him out of his misery would have just inflamed Wesley's, would never have made up for it, would have been empty and justifiable - and still, still, Wesley would have handled the demon and trapped him and brought Angel back instead, refusing to fail to save him. By the time it was a matter of Wesley's own life, well, there was no justifiable reason to put down a souled Angel.

And if there was, because murder was wrong, Wesley was too far gone to value himself quite enough to know if he'd do it because he ought to stop a vampire, or just because of a wild flicker of self preservation instincts switching on at a particularly helpful near-death moment. Now, now was far far too late. If he put Angel down now, he'd be killing his last little sliver of consolation, when he lets himself be deluded by his own wicked wrongness. If he thought he was miserable now, surely - surely there were worse things. Worse things that might have been better, just.

Things like trying harder to get Angel's soul back, or letting the universe do its work, and losing this little sliver. Like stopping the killer that sleeps in his bed with him, and probably plays with pretty innocent things, things he wants to make Wesley help play with, eventually. Stopping the killer and being alone.

And knowing he did the right thing, again, maybe. That its cost was everything, of course. It had to be.

It would never have been reality if it had been anything less than that.

Walking on the dark side, that was a joke. A mirthless one. Lilah hadn't been it. Wolfram & Hart, Holtz, kidnapping an infant. None of that. None of the mistakes he'd ever made, not quite ever. Choosing the sliver, the little faint hopelessly obvious lie, that was it. That was the dark.

Letting this continue. Letting himself indulge this thing, this thing that can never, should never, be.

Angel wouldn't have wanted this.

"You couldn't justify killing humans, with a soul; torturing with a soul, Angel." It was insane, slipping up. It didn't matter, Wesley pushed through, voice firm and loud and more real than Angelus pressing the pain into him. "You didn't have the motivation to do it anymore."

Angelus was poised, paused, still unsympathetic pressure against Wesley's body, it didn't feel good. Angelus was holding on, for something. "Just like now - now we have an arrangement, and you don't perhaps kill as much as you might have otherwise." At this, Angelus looked ponderous, almost letting the rage at himself flare down a touch to redirect, but Wesley persisted, "Because you are motivated to be less impulsive, to pick the victims and the actions that are worthwhile and will get you what you want. You don't cooperate with me because you have some thing keeping you in check, you do what you do because it suits what you want. Just the same reason I do."

Angelus tilted his head, probably some part of him mildly wondering what Wesley ought to deserve later for even partially indicating that anything Wesley does makes Angelus do anything, although that certainly hadn't been the way Wes had meant to say it. He just had a... habit of dominating and not wording things in quite the appropriate type of way, anymore. He'd strayed too far from placating Angel to easily find his way back to it, especially under duress.

"Even with the guilt, you have a reason. So it doesn't stop you." Angelus's voice had died down, that quiet lull was returning to the room, and the atmosphere being interpreted by Wesley's instincts became more of an inhabited place again, rather then a pending crime scene. The vampire seemed so damned confused. Hiding it well, of course, he rarely wore anything but confidence outwardly... except perhaps broodiness, and if Angelus knew that second one, he might possibly be so disgustedly reminded of certain aspects of himself that like Wesley, he might oddly find the impulse of slicing off his own face to be immediately bafflingly appealing.

But Wesley liked that face, unfamiliar and wrong as it sometimes was, for both reasons he might have expected, and odd different newer ones. It wouldn't do.

"With the right motivation, you can justify anything."

Wesley imagined that Angelus was contemplating what justifications Wesley made, a topic Wesley found with growing awareness was something that was more functional the less it was considered. In fact, it was rapidly falling to pieces all the time. It was easy enough to turn off in the numbness, the cold disconnect of doing his work.

The shell of living that Angelus seemed not to like, seemed determine to thrash and gently coax off balance, whatever it took, because Angelus seemed to like that raw justification that captivated Wesley and drove him in between the moments of action.

Perhaps this was why. All this time, Angelus's own little demon of better nature was being fought, and Angelus knew that sometimes one had to pay attention to the answers.

Perhaps Wesley was full of shit.

It didn't matter. It didn't. Wesley wanted this all to stop. He tried to move his hands, use whatever methods at his disposal to change the scene, make things different again, some new other different that would be more bearable then the current one, but his whole body was still pinned. Was pressed even more immobile when he tried to jerk it free.

He didn't want this asked. "How do you justify this, Wes?"

He wouldn't.

He would rather be tortured.

It wouldn't come, of course. Angelus wouldn't. That would be too easy a way out. It wouldn't have been enough to make him speak anyway. Death would go over better, and he wouldn't die.

"I won't turn you, you know," Angelus spoke, after minutes where Wesley stoically wondered if Angelus would try and fail to force a response. "Not for a while, anyway."

He didn't let Wesley get up though. It's not like it bothered Angelus any.

Wesley, perhaps, had not been ready to actually drift to sleep, but had been content to continue laying motionlessly and even maybe rest his eyes and let what may happen, or not, be. But eventually, he felt Angelus soften his harsh press and move to lay beside him. "I like you, the way you are."

Barely there. Figures. Like everything, like anything should, like the gentle touch to his wrist where Angel cut it and made him lick it, like this joke. Barely a joke, really.

He wanted to laugh. Wanted to say that he supposed that was a good thing, then remembered what happened to everyone else Angel, Angelus, ever liked.

Remembered Angel didn't -

He really, really wanted to laugh.

Instead he rolled toward Angelus, grabbing for the back of his neck, pulling him close, to kiss.

To make reality come back to just this moment of touch, without all of the truths to swarm it all up and suffocate them.


End file.
